The fourth season finale of Desperate Housewives, which featured the infamous five-year jump to the future, saw Susan kissing someone not Mike, Bree finally turning into Martha Stewart, like everyone expected, Lynette's twins not growing up the way she liked them too, and Gabby turning out fat and very unglamorous. Despite the differing opinions on the effect of this little device, Desperate Housewives will move on with its fifth season this fall, and one of its writers and consulting producer said that, yes, viewers will get to see “some flashbacks,” but not too much.

"You'll see some flashbacks,” revealed Jeff Greenstein. “Occasionally there will be some things you've missed that we'll have to explain. There's going to be some things you've missed that we're not going to explain so quickly. [However,] we're not doing Lost. We're not slaves to flashbacks."

Despite the flak it received, Greenstein likes the flash-forward, as it added creative energy to the team since the characters sort of had a clean slate, and their “predicaments” were “reset.”

"We found that after four years in, we were looking to portray those predicaments once again. We didn't want to have to wait to show Gabrielle with children, or Bree in a thriving business, so we figured let's just jump ahead and do it. ... Let's see what Lynette is like with two 16-year-olds at home. That was something we didn't want to have to wait until season ten to start exploring."

In the same manner, the Desperate Housewives' five-year jump also did their actors well. For instance, the normally glamorous and sexy Eva Langoria needed to play someone who is feeling unattractive after having the two kids, and it proved to be a challenge for her.

"That's part of the joy of working on a television series: you get to write the big Russian novel. Over time you can unfold the story and find depths in a character that weren't there when the character was initially designed."